Rephrasa and Citation Machine side by side
| Rephrasa | Citation Machine (as published) | |
|---|---|---|
| Styles | APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 and 17, Harvard (Cite Them Right), IEEE, AMA 11 | "thousands of styles, including MLA, APA, Chicago and Harvard" |
| How you add a source | DOI, URL, ISBN, manual form (9 source types) | Source-type guides: website, book, journal, YouTube, images, movies, interview, PDFs |
| Price of citations | Free, no limit | Paid plan price not shown on the fetched page |
| Advertising | No ads at launch, no advertising cookies | Consent centre lists targeting cookies "set through our site by our advertising partners" |
| Export | Copy with formatting, .txt, .ris, .bib | Google Drive or Microsoft Word |
| Paraphraser on the same site | Yes, free | Upsell to grammar and plagiarism plans |
Free APA citations, without the clutter
Rephrasa uses the official APA 7th edition CSL style and was tested against APA Style's own reference examples. Paste a DOI and the reference comes back with authors, year, sentence-case title, italic journal and volume, issue, pages and the DOI link, plus the in-text citation. The APA citation generator page shows examples with their official sources.
At launch the tool page has no ad slots and sets no advertising cookies, and the details of your sources are never sent to analytics.
Where your bibliography lives
Rephrasa saves your bibliography in your own browser on this device. It is never uploaded, so there is no account and nothing to lose on our side, but it also does not follow you to another computer. Export .ris or .bib to move it, or copy the formatted list into your document.
When Citation Machine may suit you better
- You need a style outside the six families Rephrasa covers; Citation Machine lists thousands.
- You want guided forms for source types Rephrasa does not list, such as images, films or interviews.
- You want to save citations straight to Google Drive.
Rephrasa fits better when you cite academic sources by DOI or ISBN, need IEEE or AMA as well as APA, and prefer a page without advertising cookies.
Beyond APA: Chicago and AMA
The same tool switches to Chicago 18th (notes and bibliography or author-date) or AMA 11th with one click, re-formatting every entry. See the Chicago citation generator and the AMA citation generator.
How we check citation output
Any citation tool is only as good as its style rules and its data. Rephrasa uses the official Citation Style Language files without changes and runs automated tests that compare its output with examples published by APA Style, the MLA Style Center, the Chicago Manual of Style, the IEEE Reference Guide and university library guides for Harvard and AMA. Where the output differs from an example for a known reason, the difference is recorded rather than hidden.
Data errors are the other source of mistakes, which is why the form always shows the fields before you add a source.
Three APA details to check in any generator
- Sentence case in article and book titles: only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns get capitals.
- "et al." in the text from the first citation for three or more authors, but all authors (up to 20) in the reference list.
- DOIs as links in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx, without "doi:" or "Retrieved from".
These three cover most of the APA corrections markers write in the margin.
No sign-up, nothing to recover
Because there is no account, there is no password to forget and no project to recover. The flip side is that clearing your browser data removes the list, so keep an export of anything you will need again, such as a thesis bibliography.
Getting a DOI for an APA citation
APA 7 asks for a DOI whenever an article has one. Look on the article's first page or its web page, or search the title on crossref.org. Paste the DOI here and the generator fills in the rest from Crossref.
One list, any of six styles
Switching the style menu re-formats the whole list in place, so a draft written in APA can become MLA or Harvard in seconds if a module changes its rules.